A Handbook for the Spiritual Journey

Communities of Innocence

We need help realizing remembering, connecting with, and living out of the heart of what matters most. That’s the first thing to go, our connection with the heart of what matters most. We need a community to help us nourish, enable, sustain, and deepen our relationship with the heart of what matters most. We need a community to help us remember what is important, and to insert itself between us and the complete loss of soul. The type of community I have in mind is a community of innocence, a community with no agenda beyond enabling its members to see, hear and understand—know, do and be.

We need a community of innocence to help us know, and remember, who we are, and also are, and what we are about—to perceive, and live in light of, our particular gifts, our Genius, in offering what is needed in each situation as it arises for as long as we are alive. We need a community that believes in the power of individuals living in light of their own destiny, and out of the gifts they have to realize and serve that destiny—which is nothing less than the power to transcend, transform, revitalize and redirect the world.

We lose soul when we lose our bearings, when we lose our way, when we forget who we are and what we are about, when we take a reckoning and conclude it’s hopeless, when we are overwhelmed with the pointlessness of it all, and wonder, at the bottom of the solid rock wall of reality, why pick ourselves up and run full bore into it again—when we ask ourselves the questions that kill our soul: “So what? Who cares? What’s the use? Why try? What difference does it make?” When that is the case with us, we need a place where we can gather to recover, to regroup, to restore our souls—a place of renewal, revival, resurrection—a place where we remember, and reconnect with, the heart of what matters most. We cannot find our way soulfully, joyfully, through the world without a place like this in our lives.

Communities of innocence have nothing at stake in us beyond enabling us to who we need to be in fulfilling our destiny, and bringing forth who we are within the context and circumstances of our lives. Communities of innocence are a means to the goal of individuation, self-realization, self-development, of their members and of the world. Communities of innocence do their work by listening us to the truth of who we are, and also are—by seeing us, hearing us, understanding us—thereby assisting us in the work of seeing, hearing, and understanding ourselves. Communities of innocence bring to our awareness the full range of conflicts, contraries, dichotomies, discrepancies, and contradictions, that characterize our lives—and assist us in the work of reconciliation and integration. Communities of innocence connect us with what matters most, and help us bring that forth in our lives.

The rule is simple: Don’t allow the world to determine your response to the world! Our response to the world has to spring from our connection with the heart of what matters most. We have to live in the world as we would live if the world were what it ought to be. We take a step toward the ought-to-be when we live in light of it. We nudge the world toward transformation when we live in the world as expressions of how the world ought to be. We are to live in ways that bring hope, and wholeness, and joy to life. To live in ways that bring life to life.

We seek out, and help create, communities of innocence to assist us in remembering who we are and what we are about. These gatherings help us maintain our focus on what is important, and remind us to live in ways that bring hope, wholeness, joy, and life to life in our lives, and in the life of the world. And so, the search for those who will gather with us, and help us remember what matters most.

Did you think these things depend upon something else, something other than us? Did you think we are all waiting for deliverance from the outside? From the Great Beyond? That one day there will be a Great Getting’ Up Morning, dawning with a trumpet blast, and a mighty army of angels come to set things right? Did you think it’s all dismay and gloom until the magic hour when “the god of the machine” comes whizzing in on the greased cable to whack the bad guys a good one and set the world back on course? There will be no apocalyptic reversal. The tools that will do the turning are the communities of innocence that restore our souls, and the soul of the world.

It comes down to what we take seriously. Paul Watzlawick wrote a book in the eighties entitled, The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious. It would be good for us to remember the phrase. We are forever giving up hope in situations that are not serious. We are defined by what we take seriously. How do we know that the seriousness with which we regard things is justified? What makes us think it’s hopeless and serious? What are the truly serious things?

I hope laughter is on your list. I hope you are serious about laughing. And playing. And working something you love into every day. And having a good time. And being good company. I hope you take being good company seriously, and practice it with all your determination and resolve. And, being around good company. I hope you take seriously the importance of seeking out good company, and spending time there.

We come together to remember the essential things, and to remind one another to act them out in the world: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, Generosity, Self-Control, along with Compassion, Hospitality, Grace, Humility, Awareness, Trust, Hope, Faith. . . The list goes on.

These are the things that matter most, the things we gather to remember. If we come together and are re-oriented in the direction of these things; if we leave better able to laugh, and be good company, and seek good company, and do what we love, and serve the wonderful old values, we will have all that we need to extend the power of our communities of innocence, and carry its essence into all our lives. Then we will be able to plant such communities of innocence throughout our days, and that will be quite enough to save the world by waking it up to who it is to be, and what it is to be about.